Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Zoel Dionne spent four hours instructing jury members Tuesday, before sending them into deliberations at 3:30 p.m. The seven-woman, five-man jury is deciding the fate of 63-year-old Romeo Jacques Cormier, who is accused of abducting a 55-year-old Moncton woman last year, holding her hostage for 26 days and sexually assaulting her repeatedly.

The jury must reach a verdict on all six charges Mr. Cormier is facing, in a trial that began on June 13. Mr. Cormier is charged with kidnapping the woman with the intent to confine her, unlawfully confining her, using violence to steal her money, keys, cellphone and jewellery, assault with a knife, sexual assault and uttering death threats.

The woman, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, testified earlier in the trial that she was abducted outside a Moncton mall the night of Feb. 26, 2010, slashed on the hand with a knife, forced to walk to Mr. Cormier’s home and kept prisoner and sexually assaulted for almost four weeks. She said Mr. Cormier tied her up the three times he left the apartment, but on March 24, 2010 he did not tie her tightly enough and she escaped.

Mr. Cormier testified he and the woman were acquaintances and she paid him $1,000 to kill her husband, with another $20,000 to come once he was dead. He said the woman left the mall with him willingly and they went to her house the night of Feb. 26, but he did not follow through with the killing.

Mr. Cormier said the next four weeks were spent doing drugs and having sex. He denied the woman was his prisoner, saying she could come and go as she pleased, but she stayed because she was hiding from her husband and the police. He said she was his boss, not his prisoner.

The jury was only out for about an hour Tuesday when it made a request to watch a surveillance video that was viewed earlier in the trial. Around 5 p.m. the trial reconvened and approximately 12 minutes of video was played for the jury.

The video is from a surveillance camera on the Atlantic Lottery Corporation’s building, which faces the Highfield Square mall where the woman was last seen. It shows that the night the woman went missing it was raining hard and the wind was gusting.

When the video was first viewed two weeks ago, Codiac RCMP Constable Brian Barnes pointed out various things that could be seen, such as a shadow passing in front of some lights that police later learned was a man heading into the mall to the food court. Const. Barnes then pointed out a shadow that passed in front of the brightly-lit former Sobey’s location in Highfield Square, a few minutes after the woman left the mall when she finished work.

Const. Barnes told the jury police could not determine who that shadow was during the investigation. When the woman testified during the trial, she said Mr. Cormier grabbed her outside the Bay, cut her hand with a knife and then made her walk along the back of the mall, which would have taken them along the same route as the shadow in the video.

Members of the jury paid close attention to the video while it was replayed Tuesday, with some of them gesturing to the screen around the time the shadow can be seen. After it was over, they headed back into the jury room to continue deliberating.

At 7:25 p.m., the jury requested the judge’s instructions regarding the robbery charge involving the woman’s money, keys, cellphone and jewellery. The jury did not come back into the courtroom, but the judge provided copies of the section of his instructions that dealt with that charge.

At 8:15, the jury members were brought back in and the judge told them they would be sequestered at a local hotel.